Ripple faces Australian lawsuit over PayID branding. Ripple is facing a New Payments Platform Australia (NPPA) lawsuit — a consortium which includes every major Australian bank. Although legal records have yet to be made public, it is suspected that the complaint alleges an infringement of intellectual property in relation to Ripple’s ‘PayID’ payment model branding.
NPPA secured the trademark rights for ‘Pay ID’ (with a space) in March 2017, in addition to filing for the trademark for ‘PayID’ (without a space) in October 2017. However, the application for ‘PayID’ lapsed in April 2018 and no trademark was registered.
On 17 June 2020, Ripple Labs filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for two ‘PayID’ trademarks. On 24 July 2020, NPPA filed another application in Australia for the same trademark.
Ripple unveiled PayID in June when the firm launched the Open Payments coalition, with PayID slated as a means to enhance interoperability between the more than 40 corporate and non-profit coalition members.
Ripple described PayID as breaking down the myriad of siloed payment networks globally, asserting that the PayID would make transferring funds as easy as sending an email or text message.
NPPA’s payment platform is currently used by more than 60 Australian banks. Many of the country’s crypto-currency exchanges accept fiat through PayID like Independent Reserve and BTC Markets, two members of the Ripple Open Payments Coalition, indicating that Ripple might well have known about the Australian PayID brand.
[image: Michael Amadeus]
